Alexander Serov

Alexander Nikolayevich Serov (Russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Серо́в, Saint Petersburg, 23 January [O.S. 11 January] 1820 – Saint Petersburg, 1 February [O.S. 20 January] 1871) was a Russian composer and music critic. He is notable as one of the most important music critics in Russia during the 1850s and 1860s and as the most significant Russian composer in the period between Dargomyzhsky's Rusalka and the works of Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, and Tchaikovsky.

Alexander Serov was the father of Russian artist Valentin Serov.

Alexander Serov was born in St. Petersburg on January 11, 1820, the son of Nikolai Ivanovich Serov, a Finance Ministry official. Serov's maternal grandfather, Carl Ludwig Hablitz, was a naturalist of German-Jewish origin who was born in Königsberg and moved from to Russia in childhood when his father was hired to be inspector of Moscow University's printing department. In Russia, Hablitz became a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences among other high official posts. Serov's father Nikolai wanted him to become a lawyer as well and enrolled him in the inaugural class of the Imperial School of Jurisprudence. Serov was more interested in music, however, and became a friend of another law school student, Vladimir Stasov, who eventually became a famous art critic.

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